fetter

At another point, the actor becomes one of two mortarboard-wearing orators who pull at the straps that fetter two shocked listeners.

From Washington Post ● Apr. 19, 2016

And the commission stated it was not seeking to fetter the charity's discretion to fund Cage "for all time regardless of changing circumstances".

From BBC ● Oct. 21, 2015

Not only did I beat the seasons, the Somerset clay, and the confusing, unpredictable temperaments of my plants, I overcame Walter’s dogged campaign to rein me in, to fetter my unexpected, late-flowering creativity.

From Slate ● Mar. 18, 2015

Huang is something else: a person at war with all the constraints that would fetter him to anything less than an identity capacious enough to contain all his contradictions and ambivalence.

From New York Times ● Feb. 3, 2015

In the black iron fetter about his wrist, the ruby seemed to pulse.

From "A Dance with Dragons" by George R. R. Martin

“We seek a new revolution,” he said, “not less important, perhaps, in its consequences than that of 1776—a revolution in letters; a shaking off of the fetters of the mind.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 21, 2025

"I just couldn't break away from the fetters."

From Reuters ● Apr. 13, 2023

Its stage is where King Kong broke his fetters in the 1933 movie.

From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 8, 2023

Through religion, we are often invited to relive a past trauma as if it is unfolding perpetually in the present; and through the repetition of that trauma, transcend the fetters of its pain.

From Washington Post ● Sep. 8, 2021

Instead the bird struck his temple and slid hot and greasy down his face, and he had to hunker down and stretch for it with fetters clanking.

From "A Dance with Dragons" by George R. R. Martin

Both were fettered by entrenched social expectations, leaving little room for anyone who wanted to chart a different course.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 8, 2026

Despite efforts from the Valkyries and Odin’s ravens, this Viking action art piece is fettered to the ground by the demands of the studio gods.

From Seattle Times ● Apr. 18, 2022

But because one’s body is not as free as it was, does it follow that the mind should be so fettered as well?

From New York Times ● Dec. 14, 2020

It’s a place I can go to stay motivated, stay on track, keep everything fettered and balanced in my life.

From Slate ● Aug. 19, 2020

I looked at him and believed he spoke the truth, he seemed less fettered than he had been before, more modern, more human, he was not hemmed in by shadows.

From "Rebecca" by Daphne du Maurier

In fact, this is not aid but a handout of leftovers from the master's table made conditional upon fettering obligations .

From Time Magazine Archive

With iron censorship fettering the Press last week, shocking reports circulated by word of mouth throughout the Peninsula and the Isles of Greece.

From Time Magazine Archive

It would not do to let Mr. Standish think that even El Diablo Cojuelo could manage to keep Don Carlos a prisoner without fettering him.

From Bandit Love by Juanita Savage

In sacred subjects the law was inflexible, and religion, which has frequently done so much for the development and direction of taste in sculpture, had the effect of fettering the genius of Egyptian artists.

From Museum of Antiquity A Description of Ancient Life by T. L. (Thomas Louis) Haines

Monogamy is not a fettering of human impulse, but a registration of the deepest yearnings of men and women.

From The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book by William F. (William Frederick) Bigelow